By Amy Higgins
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Old greenbacks won't be just green for much longer.

The $20 bill unveiled by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on Tuesday is awash in blues, yellows and peaches. Scheduled to go into circulation this year, the new currency is supposed to hamper counterfeiters but help people who are visually impaired.

"Different colors for different denominations will make it easier to tell one note from another, especially for those with visual impairments," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said in announcing the new bill.

He said that new designs for the $50 and $100 bills will come in 2004 and 2005, respectively, but gave no indication of what colors the other bills will use.

How helpful the new bills will be to people with visual impairments will depend on which colors are used and how much they contrast, said Judy Schermer, a rehabilitation teacher at the Cincinnati Association for the Blind.

"Certain colors are hard to tell apart," she said. "Let's wait and see what it looks like when it comes out."

The bigger help to people with visual impairments came in the last currency redesign, when the denomination numbers were made bigger, Schermer said.

That redesign was also effective at thwarting counterfeiters, said Jim Emery, special agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Cincinnati.

"It was an effective deterrent," Emery said. "The strategy is to do it (introduce new currency) at intervals to keep people off balance a little bit."

The design unveiled Tuesday shows the image of Andrew Jackson - the seventh president - slightly bigger because more of his neck and shoulders are in view, and the border around his oval portrait on the old $20 bill has been removed.

The new design also includes a faint blue eagle in the background on the front of the bill to the left of Jackson's image and a metallic green eagle and shield to the right of Jackson.

Also on the front, hovering near the eagle and shield, are the words "Twenty USA" and "USA Twenty" printed in a faint blue.

On the back, the White House is still on the new $20, but a border once around the image is gone. Also, tiny number 20s are printed on the back in yellow, floating in the background.

On both the front and back of the bills, moving from left to right, there's a faint wash of green tint, then peach down the middle, then green again.

The United States has had colorful money before, but it was a long time ago, experts said.

"The U.S. used to have big, colorful currency - some of it even described as 'rainbow notes' in the 1800s," said David Hall, president of Collectors Universe, a California company that specializes in rare coin and paper money. "The monotony of black and green started in the late 1920s when our paper money was redesigned and reduced in size."

People won't see the new $20s in cash registers or dispensed by automated teller machines until after the new bills go into circulation, probably in the fall.

The government is considering whether to change $5 and $10 bills. There are no plans to alter the $1 bill, because counterfeiters don't bother with such small stuff. The same goes for the obscure $2 bill.

When the new $20 is issued, the old bills will remain in circulation and will be used until they wear out.

The average life of a $20 bill is now two years, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

The Associated Press contributed.

E-mail ahiggins@enquirer.com